In two generations, the Florentine trading and banking family became part of the world of papal bureaucracy.
By Dr. Peter Rietbergen
Emeritus Professor
Radboud Institute for Culture and History
University of Radboud
Introduction
November 29, 1604, was a busy day for Monsignore Maffeo Barberini,Clerk of the Apostolic Chamber. He was on the brink of leaving Rometo take up his new post as papal nuncio in Paris, a prestigious but also potentially dangerous position, as it brought him into the tumultuous limelight of European politics. However, it proved to be a decidedly advantageous step, eventually bringing him the cardinalate, which in turn paved his way to the papacy.
The day was a busy one because Maffeo Barberini had to signa series of documents in connection with his own affairs, his family,their fortune and the construction of their new, Roman burial chapel.1 Hence, it can be seen as the culmination of a process highlighting the phenomena of social mobility, artistic patronage and political power as the essential, inextricably connected elements of 17th-century Roman culture. This article aims to study the events leading up to that dayand to read the documents to reveal their importance for a better understanding of the rise of the Barberini: a rise that culminated in the elevation of Maffeo Barberini to the throne of St. Peter, which enabled him to repay his family for their constant support of his career by placing them in the forefront of their world.
From the Periphery to the Center: The Vicissitudes of the Barberini from the 12th to the 16th Centuries
The medieval roots of “Casa Barberina” lay in Tuscany, or, to be more precise, in the little mountain town of Barberino,2 where the family, according to its genealogical pretensions, used to belong to the local elite since time immemorial, though, according to more sober fact, they had been quite humble folk, possessing and diligently working a farm there.3 A 13th-century ancestor of the future pope left the rural seclusion of Val d’Elsa for the hectic life of Florence, the big city some 35 kilometres north of Barberino. There, in the capital of Tuscany, his sons prospered in the wool trade, of old the main source of the Republic’s wealth. Their descendants made careers for themselves in such fields as city government and papal finance, acting as ward-masters, magistrates and tax farmers or collectors.4
In the last quarter of the15th century, one Francesco Barberini (1454–1530) established a silk drapery;5 soon, his commercial contacts extended all over Italy. Francesco’s sons by his wife, the Florentine patrician’s daughter Marietta Miniati—Carlo, Antonio, Maffeo, Nicolòand Taddeo, respectively—all entered the family firm, heading the branch offices in various Italian towns or acting as commercial travellers.6 The firm’s main office became the one founded by the eldestson, Carlo (1488–1566), in the great port of the Papal States, the town of Ancona on the coast of the Adriatic, one of Italy’s main windows upon the East. From there, Nicolò (1492–1574) travelled to Pera, the rich and exotic Italian emporium in Istanbul, to take care of the family’s growing interest in the lucrative Levant trade.
Apparently, the Barberini never forgot these origins. When, some hundred years later, Gianlorenzo Bernini was asked to provide a design for a huge fountain to adorn the gardens of the Barberini summer villa at Castel Gandolfo, it included the Arno and the Metauro, the rivers of Firenze and Ancona, which allegorically fed the Tiber, the river of Rome, where the family finally rose to its greatest power, and,conversely, the city that rose to its greatest visual splendour with the arrival of this family.7
As soon as Francesco (1528–1600), Carlo’s son from his marriage to Marietta Rusticucci, came of age, the family council decided to take him into the firm. However, he was sent to Pisa first, to read for a law degree he obtained in 1552.8 He then left for Rome where his uncle Antonio (1494–1559), disgusted with the Medici tyranny in Florence, had settled in 1537 to oversee the Barberini business interests there, investing money in the grain trade, a profitable thing to do inview of the papal capital’s fast-growing population. However, instead of concentrating on commerce, young Francesco entered the ranks of the papal bureaucracy, aided by his uncle—who in 1559 was murdered on the instigation of the Medici—and, probably, by Cardinal Rusticucci, a Florentine relative who had made a career in the Curia. Both gentlemen obviously knew the obligations of pietas, that sense of family that could always be reckoned upon if one needed support in one’s career.
In 1553, Francesco, with money provided by his uncle Nicolò, who had gained considerable wealth in the Levant trade, bought the function of abbreviatore, actually something of a sinecure but nevertheless a firm step on the ladder of curial success.9 He then was appointed prothonotarius apostolicus, another position in the papal judiciary and, finally,after some very profitable speculations, he acquired the kind of wealth that enabled him to buy the expensive post of treasurer-general. This was easily the most lucrative of all offices in papal bureaucracy, since it was a key function in the world of international high finance, a world in which the papacy of the 16th century was deeply involved.Francesco now became a very rich man indeed, trading in papal state loans and obligations, and conducting all kind of monetary transactions on a grand scale, including lending money to such powerful but temporarily penurious families as the Farnese, a wise move for a man who wanted to further rise into the world.10 However, inevitably, his business dealings were such that, after his death, he had to be absolved of the fines that Canon Law imposed on clerics who indulged in trade and usurious practices.11 Luckily, his heirs seemed to know how to oil the wheels of the papal Ministry of Finance, the ‘Camera Apostolica’—of which Francesco had been, ex officio, the head. They succeeded in keeping the main part of the inheritance out of the claws of the Camera’s always greedy officials.
Thus, in two generations, by a mechanism that, during the 16th and 17th centuries, operated all over Italy, a Florentine trading and banking family became part of the world of papal bureaucracy and finance, in short of the Curia. Arguably, this specific case is exemplary of developments that, together, mark an important stage in Italian history.
During the 15th and 16th centuries, the medieval, local autonomy of the Italian commune had had to give way to state formation on a regional level. From the erstwhile independent towns, now destined to become peripheral, many people moved to the regional centres,the fulcrums of economic, political and cultural life: Venice, Milan, Florence, Naples, Rome. The 16th century shows an even stronger concentration, whereby even the greater cities, though not, perhaps,subjected politically, still felt the cultural domination of that one great metropolis, Rome. Though Italy failed to become a political unity under papal dominance, Rome still was, in many fields, the centre, a magnet that with its countless possibilities of career, status and power attracted people from all walks of life and from all over the peninsula.
The Barberini were part of this process, going from Barberino to Florence, and from Florence to Rome, as had done the Capponi, the Medici, the Rucellai, the Sacchetti and many others12—they, too,unable to resist the attraction of the centre of Italy and of the Catholic world. In the case of the Barberini, the move to the centre was a move up the economic and social ladder as well. From poor farmers they became prosperous merchants and, finally, powerful bureaucrats,consciously or instinctively making the switch in the very period, 1580–1620, that saw the prospects of the Italian textile trade dwindle almost completely before the grave economic crisis of those years.13
A Sense of Family between Curial Careers and Social Status
To Rome came, in 1584, young Maffeo Barberini (1568–1643), son of Antonio Barberini and Camilla Barbadori.14 While Maffeo’s elder brother Carlo (1562–1630) became a partner in the family firm, a curial career for the younger boy must have seemed a lucrative investment,precisely because of the by now influential Roman contacts of the family. Already, these had enabled another brother, Giovanni Donato,to secure the position of treasurer of the richest province of the Papal States, the Romagna.15 And now Maffeo was going to be educated in his uncle’s house, as Francesco had shown a decided interest in the scholarly progress of his nephew.16 Like most clerics, Francesco knew what was due to family pietas: it dictated that one shared with one’s relatives the prosperity often, initially, gained through the support of those very relatives or even their forebears. Had not Francesco’s ownuncles provided the money to buy the offices that had made it possible for him to rise through the ranks of the Curia? Supporting young Maffeo, he now was repaying his debt to the family.
Two years after his arrival in Rome, Maffeo took the lower orders,receiving the tonsure. His uncle, obviously determined that his nephew follow in his footsteps, sent him to Pisa to study for a law degree.17 When Maffeo gained the doctorate in 1588, Francesco presented him with the office of abbreviatore, which he had bought for his nephew as his own uncle Nicolò had bought it for him 25 years ago. In 1589,Maffeo was appointed to the position of Referendarius utriusque Segnaturae, an important position in the papal judiciary and by now the necessary step to enter the higher ranks of the Curia. From that step onwards,protection continued to count, but to really rise, one had to show abilities as well, either in the administrative-political or in the scholarly-theological world. Maffeo began to make a name for himself, in both fields. He seems to have had a capable legal mind as well as having been a man who, through his interest in scholarship and literature, knew how to make friends within the leading cultural circles. Especially his gifts as a poet must have facilitated his entry into the learned entourage of Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini (1592–1605) and, later,of Paul V Borghese (1605–1621).
Soon, important Curial functions came his way. In 1592, the papal Minister of the Interior, Pietro cardinal Aldobrandini, Pope Clement’s nephew, sent Maffeo to govern the town of Fano and its district. In 1593, Uncle Francesco petitioned the Pope for permission to transfer his own ‘prothonotariat’ to his nephew—a procedure not unusual,provided one paid the Camera a sizeable sum. In 1598, Maffeo was named Clerk of the Apostolic Chamber, i.e. member of the committee that ran the papal Ministry of Finance.
In that very year 1598, Francesco, who must have felt his 70 years, drew up his last will and testament.18 It was a significant text. From the monastery adjoining the church of Santa Maria della Pace, theaged prelate, invoking all his titles—Referendary of the two Signatures, Apostolic Prothonotary, Patrician of Florence—declared that he wanted to ensure the future prosperity and dignity of the House of Barberini by creating an entail, that was to comprise not only his own fortune but also the inheritance of his brother Taddeo, who had died in Ancona in 1575. Taddeo had ordered that his fortune be administrated by Francesco for his nephews, the sons of Antonio: Carlo,Alessandro, Nicolo, Giovanni Donato, Marc-Antonio and Maffeo. It was Francesco’s wish that his youngest nephew now become the keeper of this combined wealth, using the entail to further the interests of the family. In return for a lump sum, his brothers were to relinquish their rights to the inheritance. Francesco, however, obviously afraid that evenso the accumulated capital would not serve the intended purpose, dis-posed that these sums had to be invested either in papal state loansor in real estate. Revealing of contemporary custom is the treatment meted out to the as yet only priest of the family, Maffeo’s brother Antonio, who was a Capuchin monk. He was given no monetary compensation at all. His brother Taddeo would not have condoned part of the family capital disappearing in the Church’s coffers, Francesco writes concisely. Therefore, Antonio’s part was added to the entail.19
Though Maffeo was the youngest of the six brothers, his status asa high-ranking prelate automatically made him the virtual head of the family, much like Francesco had been given that honour by his brother Taddeo. He now had to take care of the unity and continuity of the family. Francesco’s testament stresses the importance of this point.Maffeo was given the free disposition of the entire capital. Estimated at some 100.000 scudi, it was a considerable fortune indeed, but it had to be used to further the Barberini interests. It should not be divided, but had to be handed in its entirety to Maffeo’s eldest son—the young prelate was not yet a priest—or to the first-born son of his eldest brother Carlo. Thus, the entail also became a primogeniture that, transferred from generation to generation, should guarantee the continued power and position of the Barberini.20
The testament contained one more interesting disposition. Francesco demanded that a capital of 4000 scudi should be set aside, to yield an annual interest of 260 scudi. These were to be used to finance the construction of a family chapel in a Roman church. The chapel should be dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. In it, each daya mass should be read for the salvation of Francesco’s immortal soul. As an alternative, annually two orphan girls, preferably of Florentine descent, should be given a dowry sufficient to enable them either to enter a nunnery or to find a decent husband. Given the fact that the number of Florentines living in Rome was large indeed, and that they certainly were not all wealthy bankers or merchants, it would not have been difficult to comply with this last request. If this option was chosen, the holder of the entail would have the right to select the girls and present them with this gift, during a ceremony in the church of San Giovanni Decollato, one of the churches especially dear to the Florentine ‘nation’. Significantly, the ceremony should take place not on the feast of the Annunciation, as was customary in such cases, buton the feast of the Assumption. Whichever alternative was preferred,the capital that was to furnish the money for these pious purposes should be invested in papal state loans, too.21
Two years after he had signed his last testament, Monsignore Francesco Barberini died. Yet, though the will was opened, for the moment nothing happened. However, in winter 1604, just before he leaves for Paris, Maffeo Barberini has his own will drawn up. Besides smaller legacies for his mother and brothers, and a clause stating that the usufruct of his possessions will be his and his alone during his lifetime, the testament once more confirms the existence of an entail comprising the entire accumulated Barberini fortune. Now, there was no question of a son of Maffeo’s being the heir. For Maffeo’s rise in the Curia had brought him from the lower to the higher orders and, thus, to at least formal celibacy: in view of his new function of nuncio, Maffeo had been rather hastily ordained into the priesthood—on October 20—and, two days later, been given the archbishopric of Nazareth. As this see was in partibus infidelium, Monsignore Barberini was not expected to reside there, as now was normal according to the rules imposed by the Council of Trent. The function was a purely titular one, meant to give him a rank commensurate with his position as the pope’s ambassador at one of Europe’s most powerful courts.
In consequence of all this, Maffeo’s eldest brother Carlo and his first-born son were designated as heirs to the accumulated Barberini fortune.22
On November 29, 1604, with the date of his departure set for December 1, Maffeo decided finally to comply with his uncle last wish. In implementing Francesco’s will, he did not opt for the orphan girl-alternative. Nor was this to be expected, given his character and obvious ambitions. He, really a “homo novus” in Roman society, in the power structure of the town that claimed to be the “Caput Mundi”, decided to build a chapel, a choice that, if anything, pointed to considerations of status and to a sense of family, as well as to the satisfaction entailed by patronage of the arts, in the public space of a church.
The aesthetic and psychological gratification implied in the act of patronage were important indeed, not only because the protection of artists procured status in itself and gave one a feeling of power, but also because the young monsignore was a real lover of the arts, who cared passionately for poetry and for beauty in all its other forms.Moreover, Maffeo’s choice satisfied a sense of family not only because he complied with his uncle’s wish but also, I think, because the ‘Roman’ Barberini now could both state their arrival in the ‘Urbs’ and emulate their kin who, in Florence, vaunted their chapel in the church of Santa Croce.23 The position of the Roman branch—newcomers to the Eternal City, suddenly risen to some power through service to and favour of the popes—now could be made manifest. But status also was served because a family chapel, together with a family palace were considered the most flamboyant manifestations of social arrival in any city. Precisely because he did not lack ambition, and knew that his and his family’s ascent to power demanded certain forms of public representation, Monsignore Barberini, to underline his position as one of the up and coming men in the higher echelons of the Roman Curia,had indeed chosen to express the fact not only in the building of afamily chapel but also in the acquisition of a family palace.
For in the same year 1604, the future nuncio, with his eldest brother,sister-in-law and their children, as well as with his mother and her brother Antonio Barbadori, had moved into a palace he had boughton the Via dei Gubbonari.24 Carlo had resigned from his position in the family firm to come to Rome and spend the rest of his life taking care of his younger brother’s business interests. Once more, the Barberini displayed characteristics typical of the Curial context. As in the previous generation, again the prelate-brother, even though, as in this case, the youngest, automatically assumed the dignity and function of‘head of the family’. The other family members now derived their status as well as, of course, a number of more material benefits from their relative’s position.25 Consequently, we find Carlo taking care of, among other things, the arrangements concerning the new family chapel.
While the new family palace served the Barberini’s need to show their position in society, the new family chapel represented more complex aspirations, of power both secular and spiritual. The documents show the Cardinal now consciously aiming to rival the chapel being constructed, from 1601 onwards, by the reigning pope, Clement VIII.The Aldobrandini family chapel, in the ancient church of Sta Mariasopra Minerva, was a chapel that in its use of costly, multi-coloured marbles exemplified and continued a fashion the Barberini were now anxious to emulate. For Clement, too, had been following an example,the one first set in the 1570s by Gregory XIII in his family chapel, in new St. Peter’s, and by Pope Sixtus V with his mausoleum in Sta Maria Maggiore, built between 1585 and 1589—the latter a chapel that, in the very years wherein Maffeo was actually having his Barberini Chapel constructed, also was emulated by the reigning pope, Paul V, who in1606had ordered work to start on what became the Capella Paolina in the same church of Sta Maria Maggiore.26
Capella Aedificatur
All this is not immediately manifest in the rather sober wording of a number of contracts and agreements signed by Maffeo on that memorable 29th of November. The documents involved, however, do illuminate some other important points. To start with, Barberini negotiated a deal with the treasurer of the community of Theatine Fathers of the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, right on Rome’s main thoroughfare, the Via Papalis. It gave him the rights to the first chapel on the left side of the nave, to be used for and by the Barberini family without any monetary compensation. The chapel would be dedicated to ‘the Assumption of the Glorious Virgin Mary’.27
The first question that arises is: why did the Barberini choose this church? In the course of the16th century, the Florentine nation, to which the family belonged, had started building itself a sumptuous church in Rome, San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, on the prestigious Via Giulia, one of the ‘new’ streets created a hundred years ago to substantiate the vision of a new Rome of that great Renaissance pope, Julius II. By 1580, the church’s nave had been finished, and the leading members of the Florentine community had been given the opportunity by the confraternity who administrated the church to acquire the rights to the ten chapels that had been created in the aisle, on the understanding that they would decorate them as befitting the church’s general planas envisaged upon completion—the transept, tribuna and cupola not having been finished, yet.28 Thus, when the Barberini decided to build in 1604, Florentine families of old wealth occupied all existing space in San Giovanni with their chapels and chantries—the Sacchetti, for example, held their place in the transept from 1603 onwards; hence,for the time being there was no room for the architecturally expressed social ambitions of an upstart family. However, there may have been other reasons for Maffeo’s choice of a different location as well.
The church of Sant’Andrea,29 on the winding but ceremonially very important street that connected St. Peter’s and its Vatican quarter with the old civic centre of Rome on and around the Capitol, had been founded to serve the monastery of the Theatines, who belonged to an Order that had been born from the ideals of the Catholic Reform movement. In 1582, the monks had been bequeathed the adjoining Piccolomini Palace, with the obligation, however, to build a new church and dedicate it to Saint Andrew, the patron of the Piccolomini family.To be able to do so, a small church dedicated to Saint Sebastian had to be torn down, but it was decided that the memory of this saint somehow would be preserved in the new church.
Though obediently starting construction, the monks were rather cruelly punished for their fervour when, in the 1580s, Pope Sixtus V decided to incorporate the tortuous Via Papalis in his grand design for the regulation of Rome’s cityscape.30 The new structure of Sant’Andrea had to be demolished. In 1591, however, building was resumed, with the church’s facade now in line with the new street. However, in 1603, the monks ran out of money and construction ceased. Luckily, they found anew patron in Cardinal Alessandro Damasceni-Peretti, the late pope’s nephew and former Secretary of State, and, if only therefore, one of Rome’s richest men. Peretti, confronted with the unrivalled buildingmania of Pope Paul V, who from the beginning of his pontificate aimed to enlarge and finally finish new St. Peter’s, decided to have new plans made for the construction of a church that would not have to blush when confronted with the Vatican basilica. Carlo Maderno (1556–1624), the architect, also, of the last building phase of St. Peter’s, submitted a design for Sant’Andrea that was accepted. Existing structures were to be incorporated in it. Peretti vowed the gigantic sum of 160.000 gold scudi for the execution of this grandiose project.
It seems reasonable to suppose that a number of Florentine families,thwarted in their aspirations to raise their status and immortalize their names with a family chapel in San Giovanni, eagerly seized the possibility to now realize their dreams in a church that was the biggest tobe built in their time, a church, moreover, that was not only near to the centre of Florentine power in Rome, the Via Giulia and the Via dei Banchi, but also had been first willed by the Piccolomini family, who were, originally, from Tuscany as well, besides having given the Church no less than two popes, whose monuments adorned the new church.31
Thus, the Strozzi family, the Roman branch of a Florentine banking dynasty, procured a chapel in Sant’Andrea, where subsequently five of its members were buried. The Ginetti, equally Florentine, spent some 30,000 scudi on a family chapel there. Nor did the Rucellai stay behind, they the Roman representatives of one of Florence’s proud-est governing and financial families—besides being business relations of the Barberini, as appears from Maffeo’s monetary manipulations during his Parisian stay. Hence, the Barberini who, in the person of Monsignore Francesco and his nephew Maffeo, only recently had entered these exalted circles, cannot have missed seeing their chance as well.
The Theatine Fathers, for their part, must have been equally aware of the opportunity provided by the presence of these families striving for power and for the status that served both to keep and create it. Allowing men like Maffeo Barberini some space in the as yet empty shell of their vast new church, they were able to considerably reduce the enormous sums they otherwise would have had to spend on the internal decoration of this great temple, for which Peretti’s bequest, however generous, simply did not suffice. For with the transfer of the chapel went the obligation for the Barberini and their like to finish it and, moreover, to do so in a way becoming the church as the Fathers envisaged it.
Some of the Theatines’ wishes were not stated in writing, such as the silent assumption that the remains of the old church of Saint Sebastian, now incorporated in the thickness of the wall of the new church’s façade, should somehow be accessible from the Barberini Chapel. And so they were, for through a small passage in the chapel’s left wall one can still enter a niche in which the remnants of the old shrine have been retained.
However, some other of the Fathers’ ideas definitely did enter the contract. Thus, the Barberini coat-of-arms, whereon the bees flew, was not to be affixed to the great arch separating the chapel from the nave: a blow to the family pride, of course, but a restriction put on all private patrons who built within the church, in order ‘not to violate the stipulations of those who had founded the church’—by contrast, in San Giovanni, most chapels proudly vaunt their origin precisely through the family coats of arms hung over the entrance arch.
The contract also stated that building should start at the latest three months after the document had been signed. Construction was to be finished within eight years. If Maffeo failed to meet this term, the concession of the chapel would revert to the Theatines, who then would beat liberty to grant it to another family, without any obligation on their part to reimburse the Barberini for expenses already incurred.32 Thus, in fruitful interaction between the relatively poor institutional patrons and the wealthy private ones, the Barberini Chapel and its likes were clearly planned as part of the church’s overall design; consequently, the greater part of the church’s interior was finished in 1614.33
Moreover, the Fathers also knew quite well what they wanted the chapel to look like. The altar wall, viz. the wall facing the chapel’s opening arch towards the nave, should be divided by four pillars of ‘marmo mischio’, and also otherwise be covered with marble of different colours, specifically to match the design of, and at least equalling the quality used in the chapel willed by Orazio Rucellai—which, of course, is the next chapel from the Barberini one.34
However, another stipulation is, perhaps, the most interesting one, shedding, as it does, an intriguing light on the change of mentality, both religious and, therefore, aesthetic, brought about by the spirit of Trent that was becoming manifest in Rome in the last decades of the 16th century. The Fathers explicitly stated that the chapel would not be adorned with ‘satyrs expressing or exciting lust, or indeed with any kind of figures or profane illustrations’—“figure laicali”—‘that would scandalize, or with worldly representations that might incite idolatry’.35 The open pleasure the Renaissance had felt in using and recreating classical, pagan mythology had not been able to withstand the demands of the Catholic Reform Movement for a more morally severe use of artistic strategies within the context of religion.
In Maffeo Barberini, the Theatine Fathers had found a client whose views on the relationship between art and religion easily matched their own. In one of his poems, he mentioned the problem, specifically telling his readers references to pagan art in modern texts and, one may assume, other artistic manifestations, were acceptable only if denoting negative meanings. As much as other considerations, the very fact of this congruence of opinions may have led the new nuncio to link his family chapel with the ideals of the Tridentine Theatines.
Also on November 29, Maffeo signed a contract with Domenico Passignano (1559–1638), a painter whom, not surprisingly, can be unmasked as one of the many Florentine masters who had sought employment and fame in Rome. Passignano, whose family name was Cresti, had aided his teacher Zuccari with the decoration of the cupola of the Florentine duomo, and subsequently followed his master to Rome in 1579. Among other jobs he undertook some work in the Mancini-chapel of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini. After extensive travelling, he returned to the Urb sin 1602, to remain there till his death in 1638. He is considered one of the painters who renewed the so-called Florentine School,turning their back on Vasari’s manner by introducing a more forceful composition and stronger colours, with obvious Mannerist overtones.36
The contract is quite outspoken in wording the patron’s wishes and,as such, rather more explicit than the standard texts normally establishing the patron-painter relation, detailed though these, too, often were.37 Obviously to comply with Uncle Francesco’s wishes, the chapel’s decoration, as entrusted to Passignano in its entirety, was to reflect the theme of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The very moment itself had to be depicted in the altarpiece—“vi si deva dipingere l’Assuntione della gloriosissima Vergine”.38 The lateral pieces would, respectively, show the Visitation of Mary and Elisabeth—“nel quadro grande della facciata a man destra”—and the Birth of Christ—“nel quadro di contro”—, at 300 scudi a piece. The lunettes would be dedicated to the Virgin’s birth—“la lunetta a man destra”—and, once again, her Assumption—“la lunetta di contro”. On the latter, pride of place was to be given to God the Father, enthroned between cherubim and seraphim, ‘as in a vision of Paradise’. For the lunettes, Passignano would receive 150 scudi, each. The pendentives—the “quattro triangoli”—should show four prophets, to be specified by the Barberini at a later moment. Together, they were estimated at 150 scudi. If the Barberini desired the use of ultramarine—the most expensive colour—, they were to supply the painter with this material on their own account.
The entire pictorial decoration, including the scaffolding on which Passignano was to work and the application of the stucco that would carry the frescoes—to apply these, Passignano was asked to use line-seed oil of the finest, imported quality—had to be realized for the sum of 2250 scudi. The painter would be given 200 scudi in advance,and the rest as work proceeded—which was customary in almost all such contracts. He was to start on his job in 1605, and was given three years to finish it. However, before the first stroke of his brush,Passignano should show his designs to Maffeo or his representative, his brother Carlo: sign of an involvement that actually was no less customary.
On the same November 29, Maffeo contracted with two master masons, Bartolomeo Bassi and Domenico Marchetti, revealing that the idea of the chapel was not a spur-of-the-moment whim but had been on his mind for quite some time already.39 For the first paragraph of the document records that the archbishop, in view of this construction,has ordered the construction firm of Francesco Rossi and Matteo daCastello to carefully select various marbles in the Dolomite mountains beyond Trent and Verona. Now, the masons are given a minutely specified list of these marbles already in Barberini’s possession; the collection built up over the past years, is to be used for the various elements that will clothe the chapel’s structure: the pavement, the two steps leading to the altar, the yellow marble pilasters that will line the walls, the wall-coverings around the frescoes, the columns of verde antico, and the cornice, as well as some of its ‘structural’ furnishings: the pedestals of the statues that will be placed there, and the altar itself. For each item, the marble is specified as to colour and quality, withindications, also, of those places where incrustation with even more costly, semi-precious stones are foreseen: alabaster, agate, jasper, rock crystal and lapis lazuli, that, too, had been bought all over Europe with this grand project in mind.40
The contract allowed Barberini every opportunity to reconsider the actual use of all this material if he felt inclined to modify either the chapel’s design or the details of its execution. The job would be done on the site itself, with the Theatines providing space for storage etcetera. Accounts would be settled each Saturday, on the basis of receipts, with the remainder being paid on execution.
The accounts that have been preserved show that the first deliveries of marble started in 1605, from the quarries of one Matteo Pellegrini. After the cart loads had been delivered in Rome, and customs’ duties had been paid, the sculptors and polishers took over: the contract stipulated for all unworked marble surfaces to be made as lustrous as possible.
All this clearly shows Maffeo’s plan for a chapel to date from, probably, the opening of his uncle’s will, the more so since, of course, contracts with painters and sculptors could only have been profitably concluded if and when the architecture of the chapel itself had been decided upon already.
Those art historians who have given some attention to the Barberini Chapel, assume the contractor Matteo di Giovanni, from Città di Castello, to have been the architect. There is no contract to corroborate this statement. Yet, there are some other indications. From 1605 onwards, building and sculpting actually started. From letters preserved in the Barberini Archives it appears that when conflicts arose over the design and its execution with the master masons, Matteo had the last word, as supervising contractor. Also, it was he who regularly applied to Barberini in Paris, asking for instructions or voicing complaints.41 Moreover, a letter written by Maffeo to one of the sculptors in Autumn 1605 shows that he did indeed plan to make some changes to the original design, even though this affected the original budget as well.42
However, financial considerations probably did not bother Maffeo over much. Never, during his Parisian years, did the archbishop forget to attend to his private business interests. Indeed, he maintained a voluminous correspondence with his brother Carlo and his maternal uncle Antonio, mainly dealing with commercial affairs and the legal problems connected with them.43 Moreover, the position of a papal nuncio was a very profitable one for someone who knew how to use it properly. True, the costs of keeping up rank and position were considerable,and the stipend provided by the papal Camera so paltry that one had to dig deep into one’s own pockets to be able to meet them. However, the revenues generated by the law court attached to the nunziatura, the numerous privileges of a legal or spiritual nature a papal nuncio could grant under the provisions of Canon Law in the way of dispensations, indulgences and the like, as well as the possibility of profiting from Rome’s financial dealings with the ecclesiastical authorities of the state one was accredited with, all could serve to enrich a papal ambassador. Of Maffeo it was whispered that he amassed a fortune during his time in France.44 With a man stemming from a long line of merchants and bankers this is not, perhaps, very surprising. Though not all con-temporaries chose to follow a line of action as practised by Monsignore Barberini, still, his conduct was quite normal enough not to be morally reprehensible in his own time’s terms.
Yet, even without his Parisian transactions, the archbishop could not exactly be called a poor prelate. His account books, kept in numerous heavy volumes in the family archives, show how a Church dignitary through the accumulation of Church offices could acquire a princely income. Yet, in Barberini’s specific case, this even was superseded by his revenues from the family fortune.45
From the archbishopric of Nazareth, for all its being a sinecure, Maffeo drew some 1200 scudi a year. To this were added some 2500 scudi from pensions granted to him by the pope on the strength of the revenues from a number of prosperous Italian sees: Arezzo, Chieti, Cremona. Then, in 1606, Pope Paul V sent his Parisian ambassador the red hat.46 As with all Italians elevated to the cardinalate, Barberini,too, was proclaimed a ‘poor cardinal’, which meant that he was paidan additional annual sum of 1300 scudi from the coffers of the Church. Also, of course, the cardinalate made Maffeode iure head of the family,in its widest sense of cognate and agnate relationships: he now definitely was the visible symbol of Barberini power and pride.
Soon, Cardinal Barberini exchanged the see of Nazareth for the far more lucrative archbishopric of Spoleto, which paid some 2400 scudi a year. As cardinal-legate of Bologna, a major political-administrative function given him after his return from Paris, Maffeo not only exercised great power, Bologna being one of the wealthiest provinces of the Papal States, he also pocketed another 2400 scudi annually for the duration of his legation—three years. On his return to Rome, he was made president of one of the papal supreme courts, the Segnatura. The salary was commensurate: 1600 scudi a year. It is no surprise, then, to find the cardinal’s personal fortune in 1620 estimated at some 260,000 scudi, yielding an annual income of, at least, 30,000 scudi.47 Obviously, Barberini had not failed to profitably invest his savings—in 1610 already some 11,000 scudi48—though his expenses were huge, what with the court he kept to maintain his position and, of course, the money that went into such prestige-increasing building activities as the extension of the family palace and the construction and decoration of the new chapel.
Questions of Iconography: The Influence of Trent
At a moment when the architecture of the chapel had already been decided upon and the main lines of the interior decoration had been convened with the contractors, the final design for and execution of the decoration of the ceiling and the cupola still was being debated.
Four alternatives were considered:49 an entirely painted version, a combination of painting and gilded stucco, a stucco-cum-mosaics one,and a decoration with mosaics, only. The price tags attached to the various versions differed considerably: 600, 1000, 2100 and 3160 scudi, respectively. The fourth option could not but be the most expensive one for the simple reason that in order to realize the desired visual effect in the scenes represented in the cupola for a viewer deep down in the chapel’s narrow, high space, a great number of tiny pieces of mosaic would have to be used.
Carlo Barberini, apparently a purse-proud man, decidedly rejected this last possibility, even after he had succeeded in reducing the asking price by some 800 scudi during negotiations with the mosaic makers or vetrari, from the appropriately-named firm of Pomo d’Oro. On the other hand, Father Marcello Pignatelli, the Theatines’ business manager, objected that if money considerations were to be decisive, one should realize that the most inexpensive method, a stucco-only option,would look rather ‘cheap’. He was joined by the architect, who argued that, if mosaics were too costly, frescoes had to be the alternative. Only of these two choices it could be said that they ‘had elegant beauty and would delight everyone’.
When Passignano then came out strongly, though not, perhaps, surprisingly, in favour of a painted decoration, it was decided that way. Only the opening of the lantern would be surrounded with a stucco wreath, as had been used to great effect in the costly Aldobrandini Chapel recently finished for the memory of Clement VIII. For whereas the rich marbles and semi-precious stones served to create an impression of overwhelming wealth, the chapel’s spiritual dimension should, of course, be realized in the iconography of its painted decoration. Some loose sheets preserved in the Barberini Archives attest to the fact that the patrons gave the question considerable thought. In view of what Inow know of Maffeo’s ethical and aesthetic ideas, his influence is easily discernible.
The sketches involved, with the accompanying verbal explications,are not signed and it is therefore impossible to attest their author with any certainty. It does not seem to have been Passignano himself. It is a well-known fact that painters normally worked almost completely on commission, which meant they even were given detailed instruction asto the scenes and figures that should be depicted, and the imagery that should be, implicitly or explicitly, expressed. Nor should we assume the majority of artists to have been highly literate, even learned men.
Yet, this aspect of patronage has been much debated. For it is also quite obvious that such instructions seldom were the outcome of learned, theological and aesthetic considerations on the part of the patron who paid for the work. Generally speaking, the patron would indicate the grand lines, only, perhaps stressing the need to accentuate certain elements. Depending on the importance of the commission, he or she might then employ a more expert adviser to draw up a detailed program. I think the latter was the case even where such an indisputably learned patron as Maffeo Barberini was concerned.
Passignano, at least, must have been used to this kind of dependency. When, some twenty years later, after his early patron had become pope,he presumed on their former relationship by asking Carlo Barberini for a job in the ongoing decoration of St. Peter’s, he was given the commission of two of its altars, the altar of St. Thomas in the Old Choir, and the altar of the Presentation of the Virgin, in the homonymous chapel. Now, it was the basilica’s then architect, Carlo Maderno,who supplied the themes, though he offered Passignano alternatives to choose from.50
As Passignano’s contract stipulated, the Barberini-chapel was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, a choice reflecting the Tridentine predilection for Christ’s Mother as the most venerable and effective link between mankind and its Maker.
Livioandronico2013, Wikimedia CommonsAccording to the wish of the chapel’s virtual founder, Monsignore Francesco, Mary’s Assumption was to be the focus of the chapel’s decoration. However, the instructions given to Passignano rather accentuate Mary’s Immaculate Conception and its consequences for her life as Christ’s mother, as can be seen on the various frescoes he painted on the chapel’s two lateral walls. The left wall’s lunette directly refers to the Virgin’s birth, with a servant extracting the child, instead of depicting, as was usual up to that time, the mother’s purification after she had given birth: thus it contains the message Mary really had been without original sin.51 The lunette of the opposite wall shows the Annunciation. The main painting on the left wall depicts the Visitation, with the two women meeting in the midst of a few servants and neighbours. The main fresco on the right wall refers the spectator to the moment Mary brings her Child to the priest in the temple; Joseph is conspicuously absent.
This sequence of scenes in which Mary is the centre seems to express one of Maffeo Barberini’s strongest theological beliefs. He proclaimed his love of the Virgin and the notion of her immaculate conception in various poems; he was to defend the idea all through his life and, after his election to the papacy, even considered codifying it as a Church dogma although, in the end, political prudence kept him from doing so.52 The concept of the ‘immaculate conception’ was much debated both within and without the Church of Rome because it affected the central debate about the force and working of God’s grace. Critics denounced the concept because it bordered on a deification of the Virgin and, consequently, lessened the singular position of God himself.Yet its advocates held that she, of all humankind, was the only one to have received God’s grace to its unique, fullest extent, a gift that was His to bestow, only. Thus, she had been truly ‘Deiparae’, Godlike. The strongest advocates of the tenet were to be found precisely in those religious Orders that sprang from the Catholic Reform, among them the Theatines in whose church Maffeo built his chapel and, of course,the Jesuits, who had been Maffeo’s teachers.
The Marian devotion of the Society of Jesus, with its theological implications, was an important religious weapon, used to demonstrate the all-embracing force of God’s grace. Of course, it also was the Church’s main instrument in stressing the holy task of motherhood, the central, even if admittedly only meaningful female function it was willing to sanctify outside monastic vocation.
In view of the Jesuits’ insistence on the position and role of Mary,I was not surprised to discover that a Jesuit priest, Father Bernardino Steffonio had been involved in the decorative program for this chapel, commissioned by one of the Jesuits’ star pupils in a Theatine church. His presence in the scheme of things was appropriate indeed. In Rome, he was one of the advocates of a new rhetoric, employing suitable pagan elements to achieve Christian aims. Though the Jesuits sought to infuse this synthesis in their verbal propaganda, as is shown in their manual ‘On preaching’, they also tried to reach their goal by visual means. Interestingly, Steffonio also was one of the Jesuits’ foremost dramatists, a prime force behind the theatre culture that had evolved in the Collegio Romano, Urban’s old school.53 The Jesuit theatre was, ofcourse, a Baroque fusion of pictures and poetry, of words and images;but the theatre also made use of gesticulation, of beseechingly-wrung hands, modestly turned shoulders and penitently hung heads, in short of the body language that was as effective on the stage as it was in the pulpit, and that could be encoded in painting as well.
But whereas on the stage Father Steffonio did not eschew the use of Classical themes reread, so to say, to convey a Christian message in the process called “amplificatio christiana”, in the Barberini Chapel this strategy was apparently deemed unconvincing or inappropriate. On February 8, 1606, Father Bernardo addressed an extensive memorandum to Carlo Barberini, outlining his views54 and supplying advice asto the iconographical details of the cupola’s paintings. He realized the patrons wanted something different, which would not follow tradition but would still express their veneration for the Virgin Mary. Though he took care to avoid the impression he was proposing new-fangled notions, he did suggest that instead of depicting scenes from the Virgin’s life the cupola’s frescoes should rather stress her essential virtues, the outcome of her unique status. These could be symbolically rendered through the presentation of the appropriate attributes and colours.
However, even though the Reverend Father wrote he was afraid to be accused of arrogance, on close inspection his proposal does not seem to warrant his fear as it is not all that original. It mainly follows the iconography codified by Cesare Ripa in his famous handbook, first published in 1593 and since used all through Catholic Europe.55 A new Roman edition had appeared in 1603, and may well have inspired Father Steffonio, for the similarity between the forms, attributes and colours he proposed and the ones suggested by Ripa is striking indeed.Nevertheless, the ideas were still recent enough to impress the visitor of the Barberini Chapel as unconventional, as daring, even. Or, as a description of the program for the cupola, preserved in the Barberini Archives, puts it: ‘one now may see in which singular and new way thesaid virtues have been symbolised’.
What did a spectator see?56 Humility is shown standing on a marble pedestal in a green meadow strewn with flowers, her steadfastedness accentuated by her paraphernalia. She is a young girl, clad in blue,her bosom girt with a silver-and-gold cincture. Sunk in thought, she presses a dove carrying an olive branch to her breast, her feet resting on a globe.57 As Father Steffonio writes, there is a sure theological basis for all this imagery. Virginity, a majestic but pallid maiden, has her eyes cast to Heaven. Her head is crowned with a wreath of stars. She is dressed in white, and carries a lily in the one, and a burning lamp in the other hand. A lamb and some flowers rest at her feet.58 Faith walks in blue and gold, holding the Book of the Apocalypse with its seven seals in her hand. The key hangs from her wrist. A gigantic eagle unfurls his wings behind her.59 Charity spreads her cloak to cover the entire world. Her head is crowned with a flame, her other attributes are a lily, a dove and a pomegranate. She holds the Psalter and an ivory baton. Herbreast is pierced by a sunbeam, and she stands in a fiery chariot thatwings her up to Heaven, where on an altar a sacrifice burns.60 Above each of these virtues, a cameo holds the animal that is special to them:Humility has a lamb, Virginity a unicorn, Faith an eagle and Charity a pelican that pierces its own breast to feed its offspring.
Perhaps rather later than is commonly assumed, the cupola’s pendentives came to be filled with four Old Testament figures dear to Barberini as well. David is there with his harp—the poet-prophet who became king of Israel as, finally, Maffeo, himself a poet who wanted to be a prophet, became priest-king, of the Church and the Papal States; Solomon, the wise, who built the temple, as Maffeo, who completed St Peter’s; Moses, who gave his people the law, as Maffeo felt he had to do,and, in many ways, did, both as a poet and as the Church’s lawgiver. And finally Isaiah, brooding over his people’s inconsistency and their tendency to forget God’s rules—a theme dear to Maffeo, who often felt his poetic sayings, his prophecies, went unheeded. It seems as if these four painted representations belong to the period of Maffeo’s pontificate, rather than to a previous time of his life.
Meanwhile, all the other main parts of the chapel had been finished. In 1606, Carlo Barberini had concluded a contract with two specialized masons from the firm of Bassi and Marchesi, who would take care of the marble slabs that had to cover the walls. He stipulated he would always be asked to judge the quality of the marble before it was anchored. Mistakes that had to be repaired would be the financial responsibility of these men.61
While work on the chapel’s architecture and pictorial decoration steadily proceeded, in 1609 and 1610 it was time to think about statues.Therefore, in these years, Carlo and Maffeo engaged a number of sculptors as well.62 The final choice for the saints to be put in the niches of the chapel’s two sidewalls, flanking the central doors, is, again,reflected in Maffeo’s poetry.
In September 1609, Cardinal Barberini had ordered two pieces of choice marble to be delivered to Ambrogio Buonvicini and Nicolo Cori. According to a contract of October,17,1609, Cori was to make a statue of St. John the Baptist, seated, with the lamb at his feet. The model for it had been approved already. Significantly, it was stipulated that the Saint would be shown ‘partly clothed, partly nude’. Cori was given eight months to finish his job, for the sum of 300 scudi. On the same conditions, Buonvicini would provide a St. John the Evangelist,for the opposite niche. Actually, the statue as finished is, despite the archival documents on which my case rests, sometimes attributed to Ippolito Buzio. Obviously, the two stand at the beginning and at the end of the New Testament, on which the Church’s relationship with Christ is based.
Another piece of marble had been given to Cristoforo Stati, called ‘il Braccianese’; this was to be transformed into a St. Mary Magdalene, another of Maffeo’s poetically acknowledged favourites: was not she the perfect personification of the force of God’s grace which a believer could acquire if, with the help of the Church, he or she showed penitence?
In 1610, Stati signed one more contract with Barberini, for the sculpture of two marble angels to adorn the architrave of the altar, at 500 scudi the pair. Meanwhile, Francesco Mochi had been engaged to sculpt Saint Martha, to be placed opposite her sister St Mary Magdalene. Forthen, as now, Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany, Martha’s sister, were—erroneously—held to be one and the same.
What went wrong is not clear, but in 1610 Buonvicini takes on Cori’s job for the statue of the Baptist.63 Does the fact that he has made anew model, showing the Saint fully dressed, have to be interpreted as a second thought, either on the part of the patrons, or of the Theatine Fathers? It is obvious that, in the context of the spirituality of the Catholic Reform, the saint who paved the way for Christ could not be shown as an antique hero. We also know that Maffeo Barberini, who had started already to make some name for himself as a writer of Latin poems on religious themes, stressed the fact that allusions to the more profane realities of pagan antiquity really should be avoided as much as possible. In this case, too, the statue as finished—or perhaps rather: the statue that adorns the chapel nowadays—is attributed to yet another sculptor than the one who made it according to the documents, viz. to Pietro Bernini, whose hand does indeed seem evident, here. In fact, wedo know that sometime after 1628 the then Pope Urban ordered somemarble to be given to Bernini to sculpt a St. John.64 The present statues hows, with a convincing sense of urgency, the saint dressed, even if only partly, in a sheep’s skin, with his cruciform staffin his hand and one foot on a rock, a lamb at his other foot.
In 1611, Stati wrote to Carlo Barberini, alluding to a commission for a bust of Monsignore Francesco, the auctor intellectualis of the idea of a Barberini-chapel in Rome and, moreover, the man who had paved Maffeo’s Roman way as well as providing him with a fortune. As if incidentally, Stati asked Carlo’s permission to also use part of the marble given him for this job to work on a bust of Carlo himself. Stati’s son would finish Francesco’s likeness. Stati also reported that the statue of Mary Magdalene was ready, but, alas, not as beautiful as his much-admired model, that even gained praise from several other artists.65 The patrons did not seem to mind. In 1612, Stati was given the commission for the bust. For Uncle Francesco’s likeness in marble 250 scudi were voted.66 Whether these commissions ever were executed is unclear. If Stati produced the busts, they either were not placed in the chapel after all, or they were removed at a later date. Those who now visit the chapel are confronted not with two busts but with two statues. The one rather stiffly portrays Uncle Francesco, while in the other Carlo is more flamboyantly presented in the guise of a seated Roman general, obviously to stress the function he later acquired, that of General of Holy Church. Perhaps the very fact that Carlowanted to be represented full-length, in his most important official guise, necessitated a complementary rendering of the old monsignore? However that may be, his statue definitely is not a work of Stati’s; some have attributed it to Giuseppe Giorgetti.
Meanwhile, only the commission for the statue of Martha seems to have been unproblematic. Francesco Mochi finished it as ordered. Still, the chapel’s sculpted decoration was not finished, yet.
In 1613, Pietro Bernini was asked to provide four white marble putti, to be placed above the two openings piercing the lateral walls, the one leading to the niche of Saint Sebastian, the other to the adjacent chapel. His as yet unfamous son Gianlorenzo was to assist him. The two Bernini were paid partly in unworked marble.67 However, here, too, problems of attribution have arisen. Contrary to the archival documents, some deem only the putti of the right wall to be by the Bernini, while they find signs of Francesco Mochi’s hand in the cherubs of the left wall.
These contracts ended the first phase of the commissions the Barberini gave to some of Rome’s leading artists for the construction and adornment of their family chapel. In the following decades, many other elements were added to it, mostly smaller and bigger sculptures, with-out, however, significantly altering its early 17th-century aspect and its main ideological message as represented in the pictorial decoration.
Surveying the genesis of the Barberini Chapel, several thoughts come to mind. First of all, one is struck by the cost that certainly was far from negligible. Though the sources do not allow for a detailed estimate, expenditure for the chapel cannot have been less than 11,000 scudi,68 a sum on which some one hundred Roman wage-earning families could have subsisted for a year.69 It shows the importance the Barberini attached to their chapel. Yet, one might argue that this possibly cannot have represented the total cost—knowing the Aldobrandini Chapel must have swallowed some 100,000 scudi, which, again, is a paltry sum compared to the stupendous amount of sc. 300,000 spent by Paul V on the Capella Paolina in Sta Maria Maggiore.70
The patronage involved certainly enhanced the Barberini’s prestige and, consequently, their power. The choice of Passignano, whose fame was at its peak precisely in these years, is as much an indication of the social necessity of patronage as the wording of the documents that stress that only the most “famous” sculptors should be employed. Secondly,the contracts, in their great detail, seem to circumscribe the relationship between the patrons and the artists as a rather unilateral one. There was little room for ‘artistic liberty’ as we understand it: the pictorial and sculptural decoration was pre-determined both in its grand conceptand in its details.71
Maffeo Barberini, the main patron, seems to have been guided by the dictates of fashion prevalent in early 17th-century court culture,in which Rome and the popes took the lead, and to which a rising family did wise to conform. The recurring references to the Aldobrandini Chapel in Sta Maria Maggiore, and the Rucellai Chapel in Sant’Andrea itself—in their use of polychrome marbles these harked back to the Capella Gregoriana and the Capella Sistina, the former willed by Gregory XIII in St. Peter’s and the latter by Sixtus V, in Sta Maria Maggiore—as well as passing remarks about chapels in other Roman churches seem to situate the Barberini firmly in the patronage society that was Rome. There, families competed with one another fora place within that hierarchy of patrons72 that, on a higher level, existed between the great capitals of Europe as well.73 For the monarchs and princes of Europe, challenged by the splendours of Rome, also tried to attract and attach the most famous artists to their courts, whether they be architects, musicians, painters, poets or scholars, and strove to realize buildings as grandiose as, or preferably rather more grandiose than the Roman examples.
The very fact that a few years after the Barberini Chapel had been completed, a new fashion of chapel decoration did set in shows people were constantly searching for new ways to present themselves, turning to new languages wherein to express their aspirations and beliefs. By the1620s, the total space available for a family chapel would be constructed and decorated as a single “macchina movimentata”, one ‘moving complex’ involving the visitor-spectator in a truly Baroque, for integral experience of images and messages that must have made the Barberini Chapel look rather traditional, if not stuffy.74
This does not in the slightest detract from the shrewdness and creativity shown by Maffeo Barberini in the choices he made around the turn of the century in following his own conscience that dictated his views on the way religious-ethical ideas ought to be artistically expressed. Of course these, too, reflected certain common currents in the period’s culture but they were rather more vigorously worded and propounded than was altogether usual. Perhaps one should conclude that in the complex, subtle play for prestige and power in papal Rome, Maffeo, the new arrival, surveying the means available, choose the newer language, the theologically and morally strict language of Trent that was slowly gaining ground, as against the more traditional language still prevailing in the decoration of public buildings, harking back to the Renaissance with its rather more open glorification of the values of Antiquity now by some condemned as outright pagan.
Opus Finitum?
Let us follow the members of the Barberini family on their first ceremonial visit to Sant’Andrea, on December 8, 1616.75 Present were, besides Cardinal Maffeo, his brothers Antonio, the monk, and Carlo, the manager, as well as Carlo’s three sons Francesco, Taddeo and Antonio, all students at the Collegio Romano. Entering the church, they would have seen the nave in its finished state, though the great cupola and the apse still awaited their frescoes by Domenichino and Lanfranco. However, the Barberini Chapel had been, finally, completed. Much thought had been given to the inscriptions that should tell the visitor of its origins and patrons. The choice had fallen on a text which, not very originally, informed the visitor the chapel had been founded by Maffeo and Carlo Barberini, to comply with the last will and testament of their uncle Francesco, to the greater glory of the House of Barberini.76
Meanwhile, Cardinal Barberini had promised the Theatine Fathers a semi-annual remittance from his income of shares and from pensions he held on abbeys in Apulia, Aquila and Basilicata. In the act of transfer, he stipulated that in the chapel ‘of our House of Barberini’ Mass would be said daily. However, each Monday, the Holy Sacrament would be shown, and the Theatines would read Mass there for the salvation of those poor souls who had entered Purgatory; on those occasions they would also preach there and a multitude of wax tapers would be lit; significantly, as an indication of one of Maffeo’s passions, there would be music on these days as well.77
The day chosen for the Barberini’s visit was not, of course, a chance one—in Rome, nothing important ever was allowed to happen without a religious reason. The previous day, Pope Paul V had issued a Brief that conceded a plenary indulgence to anyone who visited the altar of Mary in Sant’Andrea on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Both sexes would acquire this grace if, after having confessed themselves and after having received Holy Communion, they directed ‘their pious prayers to God, for the unity of the Christian princes, the extinction of heresy and the exaltation of Mother Church’.78 The fact that the fame of Maffeo’s creation really had reached the Pope is borne out by the following passage in the Brief, where Paul specifically refers to the chapel that has ‘now, as We have been told, been in the most splendid manner installed by our beloved son Maffeo, cardinal-priest of the title of San Onofrio’.
A few years later, after Maffeo had become Urban, the glowing words of a Latin description79 recall an anonymous visitor’s impression of the chapel. Looking around, he ‘admired the various marbles, pure white, dappled or coloured, the pavement and the walls covered not only withonyx but also with soft-coloured alabaster, and in crusted with jasper from Corsica’. The columns, of purple marble, the amethysts on the candlesticks, all this ‘breathes an atmosphere of utter beauty’. From their niches in the lateral walls, the statues look down on him: the saints Martha and Mary Magdalene, facing one another, and the prophets John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, who are posed opposite as well. In the cupola, God the Father sits enthroned in his might, surrounded by the four main virtues. On the walls, scenes illustrate the life of the Virgin: her birth, the annunciation, the visitation andher assumption; all around, lesser virtues are symbolised by angels. The visitor also is reminded of the monument erected to the memory of Uncle Francesco, who had ordered the chapel to be built, and whose money had paid for it.80 The description specifically stresses the importance of a visit to the adjoining recess in the church’s façade wall, where a fresco by Passignano recalls the retrieval of the body of St Sebastian from the drainage channel into which it had been dumped, while a stone carries an inscription telling of the saint’s martyrdom on this spot, and the cult that has developed here.81 This reference brings us to the last, not least important aspect of Maffeo’s chapel.
Conclusion: Capella Sanctificatur
For the chapel to become a place of real worship, and, thus, a real asset to the Barberini’s status, underlining the prestige and power of this family, no amount of money spent could, of course, suffice. True, Pope Paul’s Brief granting a plenary indulgence to those visiting its altar on the indicated day definitely was helpful. Still, Maffeo must have realized his creation lacked the finishing touch, the touch of real sanctity.
Despite the fact that he wrote a poem on the emotion caused by seeing a picture of Saint Sebastian’s suffering and his trust in Jesus, it is unlikely that this minor martyr really was the chosen object of Maffeo’s piety,82 though, apparently, people did come to this chapel to venerate the arrow-pierced young man.
As indicated above, the program specifically developed for the chapel’s decoration and reflecting Barberini’s real devotion consisted almost entirely of Marian scenes. Yet, the cult of the Virgin did not enable Barberini to attribute some more material sanctification to his chapel:real relics of the Virgin certainly were not easily found. Hence, it is not difficult to see what induced Maffeo to start a search for other holy objects connected with the major New Testament persons represented in the chapel, to be put there and turn it into a place pilgrims would come to and remember.
Why, besides for the reasons I gave above, he selected Mary Magdalene, Martha and the two Johns, the saints particularly revered in the chapel, in the first place, is not easily explained, though they all seem to personify the drama of humility and repentance he sought to infuse into his own special brand of Baroque poetry and piety. This is shown in the verses he devoted to Mary Magdalene and in the paintings of her which he and his nephews owned; for I found that, besides a Passignano-‘Mary Magdalene’, the huge Barberini collections came to hold dozens of other pictures and drawings showing this saint, who easily took precedence over all others, coming first behind Christ, the Virgin and the man who was, perhaps, the Barberini family’s traditional patron, Saint Francis—the number of family members named after saints of the Franciscan Order and its various branches was and remained quite great.83 Incidentally, Saint John the Baptist may have been among Maffeo’s choices because he was a Florentine favourite; he owned a Passignano painting of this saint as well.84
Once chosen, these New Testament saints may well have dictated the Cardinal’s search for objects that would enhance his chapel with material holiness. Yet, of the four persons venerated in the Capella Barberini, three must have presented considerable difficulties in this respect. For the remains of the two St Johns, as well as of St Martha supposedly were buried in the Near East and could not easily be acquired. Quite luckily, however, the body of St Mary Magdalene had been put to rest within a somewhat easier reach of the powerful prelate Maffeo now was. According to legend, her bones reposed in a monastery in the South of France, in the Provençal town of Saint Maximin-de-St-Baume. Hence, to the authorities governing that monastery Cardinal Barberini directed his request for some of the Saint’s remains.
The quest for the Magdalene proved not an easy one, though. It lasted, effectively, from 1617 to 1624. We know about it from Maffeo’s correspondence with an influential Provençal nobleman, Nicolas Fabride Peiresc, a member of the Parlement of the Provence, at Aix, whose help the Cardinal sought and found, if only because Peiresc, besides cherishing the friendship of a learned and powerful prelate, had shown himself an effective admirer and, indeed, propagator of Barberini’s poems.85
The monastery’s superiors had to be convinced first. They did not prove amenable. And, one may well ask, why should they have been? As their monastery was, since the 13th century, one of the most celebrated and visited shrines in the French Midi, they must have thought there was no reason to part with even one piece of the Saint’s venerable and profitable body. Therefore, high-placed officials in Paris had to be approached. The Lord Chancellor of France was asked to sign a warrant. When it did not suffice, Peiresc’s brother, influential at court, explained Barberini’s quest, the quest of a high-placed prelate, a former nuncio to France and a friend of the French, to King Louis XIII. Time went by. Finally, His Most Christian Majesty decided to consent—not least, one suspects, because in the meantime Cardinal Maffeo Barberini had become Pope Urban VIII. Yet, even with a royal order, things did not go smoothly. The good burghers of Saint Maximin-de-St-Baume would not allow the remains of their patron saint to be tampered with. In the end, the desired relics had to be stealthily removed, by night, to be smuggled to Marseille and, thence, via Leghorn, brought to Rome, to be deposited in the Barberini Chapel. Now, the great work really was finished.
In the following years, the chapel became the image in stone of a family’s continuity and power, represented in the tombs and monuments commemorating various Barberini men and women positioned against its walls. Of course, Urban VIII himself was buried in St.Peter’s, where, since the late 15th century, most popes have been put to rest. But the Pope’s saintly brother, Cardinal Antonio the Elder, though buried in Santa Maria della Concezione, was given a commemorative slab in the family chapel, as was Urban’s most trusted nephew, the Cardinal-Padrone Francesco Barberini, who was buried in St. Peter’s as well. Also, all secular members of the Pope’s immediate family were interred in the chapel, viz. his trusted brother Carlo, whom he had made first Prince of Palestrina, and General of Holy Church and Carlo’s son Taddeo, second Prince of Palestrina and Prefect of Rome. Two medallions honour the patrons’ parents, Antonio Barberini and Camilla Barbadori.86 A portrait in mosaics recalls the memory of Antonio Barbadori, Maffeo and Carlo’s maternal uncle, the last of his family and, as an inscription tells, ‘well-deserved by the House of Barberini’.87
Thus, the Barberini Chapel, with all its relics—including, perhaps,the piece of the True Cross that Urban removed from Sta Anastasia in 1628?88—and its monuments, marks a historical process, serving asa memory in marble and semi-precious stones of the vicissitudes of a family, of the careers of some of its more important members, of their social and political aspirations but certainly also of their religious ideas against the background of Tridentine Rome and Italy in the late 16th and early 17th century. When, in 1623, Maffeo Barberini, having become Urban VIII, took formal possession of his town in the usual sumptuous procession, the famous rhetorician Angelo Mascardi, in his printed comment on the cavalcade’s pictorial program did not fail to note the chapel among the more grandiose manifestations of the new pope’s specific combination of fervent religion and love of the arts,describing it as ‘the carved image of his religious magnificence.’89
See endnotes at source
Chapter 1 (61-94) from Power and Religion in Baroque Rome: Barberini Cultural Policies, by Peter Rietbergen (Brill Academic Publishers, 01.01.2006), published by OAPEN under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.